Scroll Top

SealedGRID

Scalable, trustEd, and interoperAble pLatform for sEcureD smart GRID

Project Overview: 

The rapid evolution of ICT has revealed the potential for centrally monitoring, controlling, and optimising the power grid. In this context, a more intelligent, responsive, and efficient, system has been devised, known as the Smart Grid (SG). This SG will be supported by a dynamic two-way information exchange between utility companies and their customers, contributing towards a smart and sustainable energy management in Europe and the establishment of a wiser energy consumption mentality. However, besides the benefits of such an endeavour, the power grid will be exposed to security threats inherited from the ICT sector, while privacy issues and new vulnerabilities, related to the specific characteristics of the SG infrastructure, will emerge. The problem is assessed as crucial, if we consider that a potential attack to the SG may lead to cascading failures, ranging from destruction of other interconnected critical infrastructures to loss of human lives. Thus, the development of a security platform tailored to the SG is required, that i) can efficiently manage the plethora of SG nodes, ii) deal with potential malicious hardware or software modifications due to the physical access of the customers to the SG nodes, and iii) operate over heterogeneous systems. 

Considering all the above, SealedGRID aims at bringing together experts from industry and academia from cross-sectorial research areas having complementary background with the long-term goal to design, analyse, and implement a scalable, highly trusted and interoperable SG security platform. The platform will combine, for the very first time, technologies like Blockchain, Distributed Hash Tables, Trusted Execution Environments, and OpenID Connect, while for its realization the SealedGRID consortium is committed to a fully-integrated and multi-disciplinary secondment programme combined with a set of networking, dissemination, and exploitation activities. 

In the special case of NICS Lab, it will be in charge of all the interoperability processes between systems following secure procedures composed of authorization mechanisms together with context-aware mechanisms. The goal is to protect the access to restrictive areas taking into account a set of access parameters such as the type of user, type of action or the real health of the demanded area. Apart from leading these actions, NICS Lab will also participate in all the actions related to key management, authentication and privacy. 

The results of the SealedGRID project have been very varied, in terms of defense[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10], trust[11][12][13][14] and privacy[15][16], as also stated in the references section.

Newsletters:
  • October 2018 — Issue 1: SealedGRID Scalable, trustEd, and interoperAble pLatform for sEcureD smart GRID
  • February 2019 — Issue 2: SealedGRID Scalable, trustEd, and interoperAble pLatform for sEcureD smart GRID
  • June 2019 — Issue 3: SealedGRID Scalable, trustEd, and interoperAble pLatform for sEcureD smart GRID

References

  1. Cristina Alcaraz (2019): Secure Interconnection of IT-OT Networks in Industry 4.0. In: Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience: Theories, Methods, Tools and Technologies, pp. 201-217, Springer International Publishing, 2019, ISBN: 978-3-030-00024-0.
  2. Jesus Cumplido and Cristina Alcaraz and Javier Lopez (2022): Collaborative anomaly detection system for charging stations. In: The 27th European Symposium on Research in Computer Security (ESORICS 2022), pp. 716–736, Springer, Cham Springer, Cham, 2022.
  3. Javier Lopez and Juan E. Rubio and Cristina Alcaraz (2021): Digital Twins for Intelligent Authorization in the B5G-enabled Smart Grid. In: IEEE Wireless Communications, vol. 28, pp. 48-55, 2021, ISSN: 1536-1284.
  4. Cristina Alcaraz and Juan E. Rubio and Javier Lopez (2020): Blockchain-Assisted Access for Federated Smart Grid Domains: Coupling and Features. In: Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, vol. 144, pp. 124-135, 2020, ISSN: 0743-7315.
  5. Juan E. Rubio and Cristina Alcaraz and Ruben Rios and Rodrigo Roman and Javier Lopez (2020): Distributed Detection of APTs: Consensus vs. Clustering. In: 25th European Symposium on Research in Computer Security (ESORICS 2020), pp. 174-192, 2020, ISBN: 978-3-030-58951-6.
  6. Juan E. Rubio and Cristina Alcaraz and Javier Lopez (2020): Game Theory-Based Approach for Defense against APTs. In: 18th International Conference on Applied Cryptography and Network Security (ACNS’20), pp. 297-320, Springer Springer, 2020, ISBN: 978-3-030-57878-7.
  7. Juan E. Rubio and Rodrigo Roman and Javier Lopez (2020): Integration of a Threat Traceability Solution in the Industrial Internet of Things. In: IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, vol. 16, no. 6575-6583, 2020, ISSN: 1551-3203.
  8. Cristina Alcaraz and Giuseppe Bernieri and Federica Pascucci and Javier Lopez and Roberto Setola (2019): Covert Channels-based Stealth Attacks in Industry 4.0. In: IEEE Systems Journal., vol. 13, pp. 3980-3988, 2019, ISSN: 1932-8184.
  9. Juan E. Rubio and Mark Manulis and Cristina Alcaraz and Javier Lopez (2019): Enhancing Security and Dependability of Industrial Networks with Opinion Dynamics. In: European Symposium on Research in Computer Security (ESORICS2019), pp. 263-280, 2019.
  10. Aristeidis Farao and Juan E. Rubio and Cristina Alcaraz and Christoforos Ntantogian and Christos Xenakis and Javier Lopez (2019): SealedGRID: A Secure Interconnection of Technologies for Smart Grid Applications. In: 14th International Conference on Critical Information Infrastructures Security (CRITIS 2019), pp. 169-175, Springer, Cham Springer, Cham, 2019, ISBN: 978-3-030-37669-7.
  11. Davide Ferraris and Carmen Fernandez-Gago and Javier Lopez (2023): POM: A Trust-based AHP-like Methodology to Solve Conflict Requirements for the IoT. In: Collaborative Approaches for Cyber Security in Cyber-Physical Systems, pp. 145-170, Springer, 2023, ISSN: 1613-5113.
  12. Davide Ferraris and Carmen Fernandez-Gago and Javier Lopez (2022): Novel Approaches for the Development of Trusted IoT Entities. In: 37th International Conference on ICT Systems Security and Privacy Protection – IFIP SEC 2022, pp. 215-230, Springer Springer, Copenhagen, 2022, ISSN: 1868-4238.
  13. Davide Ferraris and Carmen Fernandez-Gago and Javier Lopez (2020): A model-driven approach to ensure trust in the IoT. In: Human-centric Computing and Information Sciences, vol. 10, no. 50, 2020, ISSN: 2192-1962.
  14. Davide Ferraris and Daniel Bastos and Carmen Fernandez-Gago and Fadi El-Moussa (2020): A Trust Model for Popular Smart Home Devices. In: International Journal of Information Security, 2020, ISSN: 1615-5262.
  15. Antonio Muñoz and Aristeidis Farao and Ryan Casas and Christos Xenakis (2021): P2ISE: Preserving Project Integrity in CI/CD Based on Secure Elements. In: Information, vol. 12, no. 357, 2021, ISSN: 2078-2489,.
  16. Antonio Muñoz (2020): ICITPM: Integrity validation of software in iterative Continuous Integration through the use of Trusted Platform Module (TPM). In: Farao, Aristeidis (Ed.): 1st Workshop on Dependability and Safety Emerging Cloud and Fog Systems (DeSECSyS) - Colocated with ESORICS, Guildford (United Kingdom). September 2020., pp. 147–165, Springer Springer, 2020, ISBN: 978-3-030-66504-3.